Building control systems are continually being developed. Building control systems can provide intelligence within a building or structure for improving energy use, user comfort and building security. The complexity of buildings and their control systems have evolved to automatic systems with central points of control. The most common building control systems provide control of lighting and heating. However, control systems for fire and security have become more prevalent as these areas have become more important.
As control systems have become more complex, the technique has always been to provide a central control point which relies on many outlying sensors as this has been the most straight-forward and easily implemented solution. These centralized control systems have always suffered from several serious problems. The largest problem has been failures of the control point itself causing a complete system failure. Various attempts have been tried to introduce redundant control points which add complexity to the control system along with introducing additional failure points.
Other failures occur in the areas of communications, sensors or actuators. These centralized networks have much difficulty in overcoming failures of this type as each system has been manually balanced at the time of set-up.
Centrally controlled building systems can be disadvantageous because all decision making occurs at the controller. Therefore, if the controller becomes inoperative, all devices in the system are no longer under automated control and some or all may not operate even manually. Similarly, if a connection to or from the controller is severed the devices served by that connection are no longer under automated control and also may not operate manually. Partial or system-wide functional changes, such as an immediate need to override current system settings (for example, during a fire or other emergency), cannot be made from anywhere but the controller.
Centrally controlled systems are fundamentally limited when attempting to expand or scale the controlled systems. More specifically, it is expensive to expand and the systems typically require significantly more power to operate.
It is desirable have methods, apparatuses and systems for providing building controls that are easy to expand in size, and do not require excessive amounts of power to operate.